Valérie Loichot

Chair, Department of French and Italian

Professor, French and English

Valérie Loichot, Professor of French and English; core member of
Comparative Literature; (Ph.D. in French, Louisiana State University, 1996). Francophone studies; Caribbean literature and culture; literature of the Americas; postcolonial theory.

Author of Orphan Narratives: The Postplantation Literatures of Faulkner, Glissant, Morrison, and Saint-John Perse (University of Virginia Press, 2007) and The Tropics Bite Back: Culinary Coups in Caribbean Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 2013; winner of the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for French and Francophone Studies, 2015). She also directed a special issue of La Revue des Sciences humaines in honor of her former mentor Édouard Glissant (Entours d’Édouard Glissant, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2013).

In addition, Loichot has authored numerous articles on Caribbean literature and culture, Southern literature, creolization theory, transatlantic studies, feminism and exile, and food studies published in journals including Callaloo, Études francophones, French Cultural Studies, The French Review, The International Journal of Francophone Studies, Mississippi Quarterly, and Small Axe: A Caribbean Platform for Criticism.

Loichot's new book in progress, Water Graves, investigates the lack of proper funeral rites, a phenomenon Loichot calls the "unritual," in the aftermath of slavery, hurricane Katrina, and ecological ruin in the Anthropocene. More specifically, the book examines the construction of aesthetic graves in 21st century poetry, narrative, photography, mixed media, and underwater sculpture.

Professor Loichot was a Visiting Professor at the Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier III in 2011.